October.
A spellbinding vision for all who wait with baited breath to descend into the darkness of a frightful haunt, ready to shriek our way along the damned halls of a good Halloween scare maze.
While many on the L.A. TACO team seek out the most extreme, sickest Halloween haunts, we have plenty of friends and colleagues who say "helllllllllll no" to all of that, preferring to escape the season without added psychological trauma.
So today we don our masks (made of human skin) to dig into the eight best Halloween haunts in Southern California that will raise your hair this year, as a way of honoring the kind of immersive atmospheres and talented actors that aren't recognized with Hollywood statuettes.
So whether you're seeking the chance to play a part in an eerie scrap of theater, or dying to descend full-bore into the darkness of humanity's soul for some truly sick stuff, here are L.A.'s best Halloween haunts.
Abandon all hope, etc. etc. ...
Urban Death Tour of Terror ~ North Hollywood
Let's start with the sickest. If you’ve never been to the Urban Death Tour of Terror, you’re unprepared for what you’re about to see. Sure to be shocked and haunted for days with visions of this avant-garde pageant of nightmares, where no one under 18 is permitted.
An annual passion project from Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater in North Hollywood, this Grand Guignol Gehenna begins outside on the sidewalk, where you're handed a sputtering flashlight, paired with just two other souls, and pointed towards a warren of pitch-black tunnels.
Around every corner come moans, screams, and knocks, each turn saturated with human monstrosities, stumbling psychos, and the occasional completely nude scare actor.
The path leads to the black box theater, promising a phantasmagorical stage show cast in the model of Brecht's Theater of Cruelty, in which both real and very human horrors are depicted in short vignettes that spring out of the shadows like a fever dream.
Some are humorous, occasionally even beautiful, veering from red meat for horror fanatics to scenes that reflect a very stark, very dark, and triggering reality of the human condition at its deepest despair.
The experimental show echoes vaudeville's infamous "Aristocrats" joke, with a soupcon of Saw and a splash of Requiem For a Dream. You'll be thinking of these scenes long after your first nightmare.
And just when you catch your breath and think it's over, you'll be directed back into that pitch-black maze to scramble for your way out ...
Advance tickets are $26.
4850 Lankershim Blvd. North Hollywood, CA 91601. Closest Metro lines and stop: Bus Lines 224 and 501 - "Lankershim/Vineland."
Delusion: Harrowing of Hell ~ Downtown
We dare say this Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group production is precisely what we've been waiting for—a fully immersive haunt with awesome special effects that still have us scratching our heads.
This year Delusion possesses Downtown's Variety Arts Theater with Harrowing of Hell, a Dante's Inferno-inspired show that drags you through subterranean levels of terror via an elevator of darkness. The supernatural is made believable here, as you're called upon to perform certain tasks to escape or appease the monstrosities before you. The scenes are so imaginative and transporting, we felt we'd left this dark world for the real (also dark) one all too soon.
We won't give anything away, but Delusion is a true banger that raises the art of the haunt this year. Through November 9, tickets start at $113.
940 S. Figueroa St. Los Angeles, CA 90015
Queen Mary's Dark Harbor: Summoned By The Seas ~ Long Beach
We love the Queen Mary's Dark Harbor, where half of the mazes plunge you into the bowels of the legendary 89-year-old ocean liner. Even when you're not under attack from the undead, you'll feel the chill of cold steel, vintage ruin, and the dank heaviness of the ship's famously haunted hull.
Six mazes are offered this year, along with a few extras like a VR experience based on the movie Trick Or Treat and a spirit summoning with a psychic. Mazes riff on a voodoo-themed ritual, a gory infirmary, a demonic stint in the brig, and a romp with deranged clowns, among others.
The production value here is top-notch, featuring incredible makeup, fully committed actors, and creepy storylines that effectively leverage the history of the vessel and its associated ghost stories. There were mazes when we went that we wish had a greater number of scare actors filling in some of the dead space, while we appreciated the increased use of ghastly animatronics that creeped us out in close confines.
Outside of the mazes, one finds a carnival vibe befitting of Fooville, with DJs, circus acts, roaming ghoulies, and attractions like axe-throwing, a shooting gallery, and carnival rides, plus food booths (Sonoran hot dogs!) and cocktail bars to keep you satiated and soused between your descents into madness.
This year, there are six new or re-imagined mazes, many riffing on the ship's history, along with a zombie-shooting experience, carnival rides, food booths and a hookah bar, acrobatics, and other attractions to keep you occupied between your descents into madness. Tickets start at $45.99.
Through Nov. 2 ~ 1126 Queens Hwy. Long Beach, CA 90802
Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights ~ Studio City
We love it when horror gets a deservedly big budget on the silver screen. And that extends to a haunt designed by Hollywood’s best. Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights remain a must-do for horror fans, incomparable in scope, scale, and breadth of activities.
There's nothing like the eerie familiarity of stepping into a favorite horror franchise, like the moment we entered a haunted suburban home to stumble upon the girl from Poltergeist in a halo of static from the TV she rests her palms on. Or smacking right into Art the Clown in a delicious frenzy of corpse desecration, a stray bit of fluid hitting us right in the face as he saws away.
Plus, these are nights when the lines for the Jurassic World and Simpsons rides are also negligible, everyone enjoying the Blumhouse-themed tram tour instead of queuing up for popular rides. And you can’t beat those San Fernando Valley views.
As always, we love the theme park’s original mazes almost more than the time-honored horror films, like this year's third iteration of “Monstruos, the Monsters of Latin America” and a maze called "Scarecrow" from Slash serving a pretty cool slice of Southern gothic grizzle.
Halloween Horror Nights not only keeps the scares coming amid violent vignettes of terror and gore that resonate deeply with our horror-geek lizard brains, but it also lends the sheen of its big Hollywood budget to the things riddling your worst nightmares, transforming everyone into a Last Girl/Boy for a night. Tickets start at $77, through November 2.
100 Universal City Plaza Universal City, CA 91608
Closest Metro lines and stop: Metro B Line or Bus Lines 155, 222, 224, and 240 - "Universal City/Studio City Station."
Reign of Terror ~ Thousand Oaks
There’s something inherently scarier about visiting a haunt that isn’t backed by a major production studio or giant theme park. A lingering chance that some “i” wasn’t properly dotted, leading to the hire of some real-life escaped maniac.
Or, at the least, an unhammered nailhead poking out of some wall, just waiting to give you lockjaw in a slow Final Destination-like death.
Reign of Terror is more akin to the kinds of huge haunts full of mechanical giants and detailed scare actors that you see on The Travel Channel. Andover the years, it's become even bigger, packing a series of twelve themed environments across 142 rooms and 32,000 square feet, making it the biggest indoor haunt in SoCal.
It's also one of the scariest, giving you no empty walls to squeeze against in the face of terror, zero empty hallways, and scare actors who might just decide to follow you. You can expect to be in danger every step of the 40-minute way, from "the Forest of Fear" to a maze called "Inbred."
Though the scares begin long before that. As you await entry in a very, very long line, with creeps that have more tricks to frighten you than the endless popping-out-of-walls we've come to anticipate at higher-priced theme park haunts.
And if you miss the haunt in October, they’ve been known to bring the whole thing back with a winter holiday theme once Halloween is through. Through Nov. 2. Tickets start at $42.99.
285 N. Moorpark Rd. Thousand Oaks, CA 91360
Closest transit lines and stop: Thousand Oaks Transit Line 42 - "Janss Marketplace" or Thousand Oaks Transit Lines 41 and 44 - "Moorpark/Hillcrest."
The Medieval Torture Museum ~ Hollywood
Ah, but what could be crueler, more shocking, more disgusting than man’s inhumanity to man?
Hollywood’s Medieval Torture Museum is not a haunt in the traditional sense. Just a lament of the horrors wrought by puritanism, repression, and religion. Or a preview of what the current administration plans for those who don't clap loud enough at Pete Hegseth's military rally.
You'll tour a macabre carnival of torture equipment that gets particularly specific as to which body parts should be pierced, torn in half, sliced, or stretched, with moving animatronics and torture devices.
It’s some fucked-up shit, to be sure, proving nothing is scarier than people. And it goes all year round.
It also offers a private ghost tour experience, where you can learn all about paranormal research and use some beeping, booping things said to be conduits to the spirit world. Tickets start at $29.99
6757 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, California, USA 90028
Closest Metro lines and stop: Metro B Line - "Hollywood/Highland Station" or Bus Lines 212 and 217 - "Hollywood/Highland."
The 17th Door ~ Buena Park
Now celebrating its tenth year, The 17th Door's consistently top-rated haunt prides itself on inflicting 34 minutes of pure psychological horror onto its participants, let in 6-8 at a time, in an experience that's part-maze, part-immersive theater show and also the basis of a reality show titled "Spook Show 17."
The story revolves around a fictional prison described as the "most horrendous" in the world, where a dark force is spreading among its staff and inmates, from the warden to the prison barber, and you’re no exception.
As a food-loving publication, we are most enthralled with the "meat locker" part of the maze where a mad butcher reigns, "surrounded by slabs of flesh—some animal, some not," the haunt's website states. "Trapped and alone in this frozen tomb, no one hears your screams." Aaaaaaaa! Anyone?
Tickets start at $39 and up.
8420 On the Mall Buena Park, CA 90620
Knott's Scary Farm ~ Buena Park
This is the one that started it all for us as kids, a takeover of Knott's Scary Farm by a legion of monsters, ghouls, and undead cowboys stalking people through the dusty streets of the old west.
We love Knott's Scary Farm for the originality on display, no familiar IP or vocal tracks in sight, just pure mayhem guided by actors who get to improvise beyond what we usually see at theme parks.
This year, Scary Farms plunges you into original mazes, including the movie theater-set "Cinema Slasher," Prohibition-themed "Room 13," "The Zoo," and "Origins: The Curse of Calico," which looks into the beginnings of the haunted park.
Just make it out in time for the staged hanging or the daredevil show, "Le Magnifique Carnaval du Grotesque." It'll give you some time to get your voice back after all the screaming.
8039 Beach Blvd. Buena Park, CA 90620
